Acceptable Documents

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Acceptable Documents

This should be a starting point for a assurers who want to find out whether presented documents are acceptable and valid. Of course this strongly depends on the nationality of the person to be assured, so feel free to add resources for your own country if your country is not listed here. I have made a quite detailed document for germany if you want an example, but I think even a simple list of document kinds of your country will be better than nothing.

The policy ruling the assurance process is laid down in Section 5.2 of CAcert's Certification Practice Statement (CPS) which can be found at https://www.cacert.org/cps.php#p5.2:

To have trust points issued in a face to face meeting there is strict guidelines on how this must be achieved to be recognised by CAcert:

the person issuing the trust points must see 2 forms of photo ID: At least one photo ID must be issued by a government body. Acceptable forms of ID include Passports, Drivers Licenses and ID Cards.

Note: The CPS is currently being reworked. The new version (expected to become policy early 2008) will probably reduce the requirements to one photo ID, since there are many countries where two photo IDs are very uncommon. Nevertheless, in countries where two photo IDs are common, like ID card and driver's licence in Germany, assurers should at least ask for a second document.

IMHO it makes sense to distinguish primary and secondary documents. A primary document is goverment issued document with the explicit purpose of proofing one's identity and at least some restistance against simple forgeries like colour copiers. These are typical identity cards or passports (but see below). Secondary documents may be other documents which are suitable to prove an identity. If you are shown at least one primary document and one secondary document the current CPS is satisfied.

There is a wikipedia article about which countries use identity cards (which are always considered primary documents), that shows several images of id cards and may be used as a starting point for further research: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_identity_cards_by_country

Passports

Every nation on earth issues passports, at least to some of its citizens. The problem with passports is that there is no international standard on what a passport must contain or how exactly it has to look like. So countries with a low per capita income often issue cheaper and considerably less secure passports. I have even heard of passports which do not even contain a photo...

In the view of a CAcert assurance I can only cite the policy that at least one of the presented documents has to be a "government issued photo ID" which has to contain the birthdate of the person. So if someone should present you a passport without a photo (or without a birthdate, or btw, with a birthdate different to that entered in the CAcert database) you must not accept this as a primary document. If a country does not issue IDs with photos a citizen of that country can not be assured by CAcert currently. There are plans to install specific policies for such countries in the future on how to proceed in such cases.

Also you should be very careful if someone presents you a passport of an unusual country (see the chapter on camouflage and fantasy passports below). If you have doubts do not assure the person if no other primary document is presented.

Note that someone can have more than one passport from different countries. Many countries accept dual (or even multiple?) citizenship.

For a bit more reading about passports in general try http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passport.

Camouflage passports and fantasy passports

Camouflage passports are "passports" issued in the name of a non-existent country and sold by commercial companies. A typical reason why someone buys such passport is, that s/he is afraid of being singled out as a crime victim because of her or his nationality, for example in event of a terrorist hijacking or riot. So camouflage passports are explicitly designed to look realistic, at least to the untrained.

Fantasy passports are more or less something like "club cards", but are also designed to resemble a passport, though for different reasons.

It should be needless to say that these "passports" are NOT considered acceptable documents for a CACert assurance, since they are not government issued.

I have compiled this information from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camouflage_passport, so if you are curious about the topic maybe you should have a look there.

Lesson to learn: You should have a very close look at the document if someone wants to get assured based on a passport issued by an unusual country.

Acceptable Documents

Passports

Camouflage passports and fantasy passports

Detailed descriptions for specific countries

More reading